


The Box

by TravelingMagpie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Oneshot, written after a friend mentioned a headcanon of hers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 09:12:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4823372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TravelingMagpie/pseuds/TravelingMagpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just a box: worn, ordinary, and probably piled under six layers of other junk. And at the same time, it's The Box, and it's Sam's sanity on long car trips.</p><p>*bonus points to anyone who can identify the quote at the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Box

The Impala might as well be some sort of bigger-on-the-inside alien craft, Sam sometimes thinks. Between the armory in the trunk, the foodstuffs and discarded trash in the backseat, and enough maps in the glove compartment to supply a war room, there really isn’t any logical reason why the car should still fit two grown men – neither of whom is exactly small.

And besides all this is the box. That’s all they call it – the Box. As in, “Sam, you need to empty the Box again.” Or “Throw it in the Box when you’re done.” Or “I got a few newbies and threw them in the Box.”

It’s just a cardboard carton – the sort used to hold bananas at the minimart, with ovoid handholds carved into the sides and reinforced corners and a stupid cartoon of a grinning yellow fruit fading on the side.

But it’s Sam’s sanity on the road during those long car trips, following some slim lead picked up from a weather report or an obituary, driving twelve hours at a time from one end of the country to the other. Sure, there are days he’s got to navigate for Dean – they avoid the main highways as much as possible, and some of those outer roads can be like confused spaghetti noodles of poured asphalt tangled through farmland and woods. And sometimes he’s got to do research as they go – a new creature to read up on, a spell to memorize, calls to make to other hunters or Bobby or Ellen or Garth, following spit-balled rumors and half-remembered stories of “the time when great-uncle George followed something similar in Florida – or was it Maine?”

But for all those in-between times, all those hours of nothing but rumbling road and a lukewarm cola in his hand, Sam has the Box.

Filled with cheap paperbacks and second-hand classics, shiny new bestsellers and the rejects of the sale bin, the Box holds nearly forty books at any given time. Sam favors legal and crime thrillers, but occasionally a thick fantasy book slips in, or a non-fiction travel account. He likes books he can sink into and lose the sound of asphalt under the tires and the scratchy strains of Dean’s classic rock.

Dean doesn’t talk much when Sam’s reading. Partly because, as long as they’ve been hunting together, conversation can be beside the point, and partly because Dean’s learned by now that trying to get Sam’s attention while he’s reading is pretty much a lost cause. Generally, he just glances over when Sam reaches into the backseat to retrieve the latest find, and gives that big brother eye roll that somehow manages to combine fondness, exasperation, nonchalance, and a one-line teasing comment all in one movement. Then he’ll reach over, dial up the volume on the radio, and settle in for the long haul.

Sam doesn’t mind. He knows Dean is just taking care of what he sees as his Big Brotherly Duties, and makes a point to grab a couple westerns for the box. On long stakeouts, or on the rare occasion when Sam drives, one of them will somehow end up in Dean’s calloused hands. And in spite of his apparent disdain for Sam’s reading habits, nothing seems to stop Dean from occasionally commenting aloud on whatever he’s reading.

“There’s no human way he could draw and shoot that fast,” he’ll mutter as Sam winds through another small burg. Or “I swear, if he describes her – what does it say – her ‘star-blue eyes’ one more time, I’m gonna lose my sandwich. Stars are white anyway.”

Sam just smiles and drives on.

The Box is a constantly rotating selection, as Sam adds his latest finds from second-hand shops and the occasional bookstore stop (and Dean slips in the books he’s “borrowed” from motel lobbies). When it gets too full to hold the most recent acquisition, there’s always a charity shop, a used bookstore, a hospital, or a veterans' center somewhere down the road. A quick stop to unload the Box, and then back to whatever the job has in store.

The Box’s handles are getting rather grubby, and soft around the top edges in that way that old cardboard gets. There are a few reddish-brown splatters on one side from the time that a werewolf got too close to the open door of the Impala before Dean caught him, and several unidentifiable grease stains decorate the front like Paleolithic graffiti. Every time Sam pulls it out of the backseat to carry into another doctor’s office or hipster coffee shop, he makes a note to replace the thing soon. But somehow he never gets around to it.

He’s not entirely sure where John Winchester originally picked it up. As long as he can remember, Sam and Dean have always shared the backseat of the Impala with the Box. Back then, it was filled with toy soldiers, hotwheels, candy bars, and coloring books. There are still marks on the bottom where crayons, loosed from their little yellow carton, scraped and dragged against the cardboard in random patterns stirred by childish shuffling. In and out of motel rooms, back and forth to Bobby’s house, the box has always been there. Mile after mile, year after year – when Sam ran away, he left it in the backseat. When he went to Stanford, he left it behind – along with everything else from his old life.

But when Dean showed up in the middle of the night and the life of the hunter snagged Sam back into its clawed grip, the Box was there waiting, sitting in the backseat. It was buried under a layer of dirty laundry and fast food wrappers, and the dog-eared copies of _Stuart Little_ and _Treasure Island_ were joined by a couple of Dean’s less-than-literary publications, but the Box remained.

And now, Sam folded a map and tucked it into the stack in the glove compartment. Dean could find his way for the next few hundred miles. Reaching into the backseat, Sam grabbed the Brandon Sanderson novel he’d picked up in the last town. The air filled with the strains of Styx’s “Sweet Madam Blue,” and Sam settled in to read.

Chapter one: _“Sometimes, I worry that I'm not the hero everyone thinks I am…”_


End file.
